Sator
by aadarshinah
Summary: You made all things by your word, and by your wisdom fashioned humankind. #36 in the Ancient!John series.
1. Pars Una

_Sator_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

If he'd been a little more awake, Iohannes would have been surprised to find himself alive. As it is, the cold is so encompassing that it leaves little room for other concerns, numbing his senses and ladening his limbs. A great veil of exhaustion such as he has never known covers his thoughts. Even the task of curling in on himself, on the precious little heat still available to him, is nothing short of herculean.

Somehow, Iohannes manages it.

Somehow, he lives.

Somehow, he sleeps.

* * *

It occurs to him that he should be dead when he next wakes, but Iohannes does not trouble himself overmuch with it. He has often found himself alive when he expected to be dead and it has happened enough times the shock gives way to ponderous resignation before it has enough time to even set in. He has the vague sense that it would have been better for him to have died this time, but cannot put his finger on as to why.

Iohannes doesn't trouble himself overmuch with this either. He's still too tired, too cold, and uses what scraps of power remain at his disposal to create a heavy blanket from the nothingness around him.

He sleeps for a long time after that.

* * *

Time, however, is complicated. The best explanation that Iohannes has ever found for it is directly taken from Terran science fiction and goes something like this:

_Anything that happens, happens._

_Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen._

_Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again._

_It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though._

The others prefer something a tad bit more complicated, but then again, they always did. Either way, the end result is pretty much the same. Which is this: a long time in The Higher Plains isn't always a long time in The Lower, nor does it always move in the same direction – if, in fact, it moves at all.

* * *

**29 June, 2007 – Atlantis, {?}, Pegasus**

"C'mon, Pops," Lorne says placing a hand on his shoulder. "Let's get you out of here."

Rodney blinks prodigiously, some instinct putting his feet underneath him when all he wants to do is stay where he is, staring sightlessly at the Chair and it's environs as he tries to come to terms with the fact that John, who he thought would outlive him by millennia, spent his life-force to bring Atlantis and everyone yet within her to safety. It doesn't matter what he believed in the end, he still gave his life to save them. Again.

Maybe John had been telling the truth. Maybe, underneath it all, beneath the religious rhetoric and the delusions of grandeur, he'd not really changed. Maybe he'd still been John.

His voice sounding incredibly distant and hollow to his ears, he asks, "Where are we going?"

The hand on his shoulder is already guiding him, gently but deliberately, from the Chair Room. "If it was up to me, I'd be taking you to the infirmary, but as it is those of us still in the city are all gathering in the Conference Room. We've got to figure out where we are and what we're going to do."

"Oh." A pause. "It is up to you, you know." Lorne had been John's adopted son, his _heres_. The action had largely been political, but Evan had been one of John's closest friends outside of Rodney himself, the one person he'd had on Atlantis during the Second Exodus who saw him as something other than a monster. He'd even been John's best man at their wedding, a strange mix of son and heir and nephew and executive officer all rolled into one.

And now he is _imperator_.

"I wish I could give you the time you need, Doctor," he says, sidestepping the issue, "but we're going to need you if we're going to come through this in a few pieces as possible."

"He's really gone this time, isn't he?"

"I'm not counting him out yet, but… probably, yeah."

"That's what I thought," Rodney says weakly, looking down at his hands. They're still coated in dust. In time, that dust will wash way. In time, the cells of his body will wear thin and be replaced by other, newer versions of themselves, until there is no part of him left that John once touched. In time, he will forget John's laugh and his smile and the look on his face when he went off to die.

Rodney thinks he should go sit down again.

He goes to take sensor readings to figure out where the hell they've landed instead.

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

Eventually, Iohannes wakes, feeling almost as weak and numb and exhausted as he had before. But he must get up. He knows he cannot stay here, although he does not know why. He knows they will come for him, but he does not know whom. He must go, where he cannot say.

It's a struggle, but somehow Iohannes manages to get his feet underneath him. The hallway dances around him, the sensation only growing worse when he closes his eyes. Resigned, he heads down the hall, taking slow, faltering steps, with his eyes wide open.

* * *

As Iohannes walks, he remembers.

He remembers Loegria, that glittering blue world so full of water and wonder and life. He remembers how his people destroyed it because of religion and water and politics, because they didn't know how to listen to others, and feels ashamed.

He remembers Icarus Eosphorus, who was so good and kind and caring, the best Alteran their species had ever produced. He remembers how he walked with eyes wide open into his _Haeresis_, trying to save the one he most loved, and how he ended up becoming the worst of them all precisely because he cared too much.

He remembers his father, who was not particularly good or kind, or even a middling-to-average father, but who represented the pinnacle of Alteran science and technology. He remembers what he used to say: _The hardest thing in life is doing what is right rather than what you wish to be right_.

_Father_.

Iohannes stumbles at this thought. He is someone's son.

He's someone's brother, to a half-Terran boy born in the northern teaches of what is now Scotland long after Iohannes himself had gone into stasis. Davidus Constantin was his name. He counts all of Terra among his descendants, including Rodney and 'Helianus.

_Descendants_.

There are a billion in this galaxy alone. There are another billion in the home galaxy and seven billion, plus or minus, in Avalon. And in the other galaxies, the ones seeded by the _satores_ and never visited by his people? Another three or four billion combined. At least half of these consider his race their gods. At least one-sixth of those had considered him to be their personal god before the end.

He had believed that once. (_Once_, he laughs at himself. Once had been scarcely hours before.) But it is so easy to see now jut how wrong he was, without the press of faith or howl of prayers in his ears. He had been no god.

No, that is wrong. Iohannes _is_ a god by every definition, but it is the definitions themselves that are wrong, tangled up in so much lore that he may be the only one who can recall any part of the truth.

But if he's not a god, what is he now?

* * *

**3 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

M35-117. That's their new home. It takes them five days and nearly all the coffee remaining in the city to manage it, but they do.

The planet itself is slightly larger than Lantea is – or Earth, for that matter – with a diameter of thirteen thousand three hundred kilometres, but the mass is slightly lower. It's also slightly further away from its sun, clocking in at one point twenty-six astronomical units, the combined result of which gives the planet a somewhat disconcerting twenty-one hour and sixteen minute day. A survey of the planet in orbit has shown it lacks a distinct mainland, but rather has a series of archipelagos with main islands ranging in size from Bali to Madagascar, all of which are confined to what appears to be a region of tectonic activity in the southern hemisphere.

'Lantis insists on calling it Nova Loegria, claiming that John had designated it as such inflight. Mostly lacking the will to fight the city, he and Evan have mostly gone along with it because getting 'Lantis to do anything now that John's gone is verging on the impossible.

Rodney still can't believe John's gone either. It seems… surreal. He can scarcely remember what his life was like before he found him bleeding out in the Control Chair so long ago, having risked his life to bring the city to the surface rather than allow the strangers who had entered his city to suffocate when the power failed. To this day, Rodney doesn't know why John did that, why he gave them that chance. He can only imagine how much it must be worse for 'Lantis, who'd known John his whole life.

He knows – knew, he corrects himself belatedly, knew – so little about John. He knows he was a _tribunus_ in the Lantean Guard, that he joined up when he was seventeen but had been playing some part in the Wraith War ever since he been made _pastor_ at age five. Most of what he knows about John's childhood comes from Janus' notebooks, from lines like, _Licinus completed the calculations for the new railgun this morning_, and, _the experiment was interrupted when Ganos arrived to complain about Licinus' sporadic attention to his lessons_, which tell the story of a child much louder and much lonelier than the man he married. Hell, he never even knew John's mother's name until they stumbled upon her ship and her stasis-preserved body last year.

And now he is gone, taking with him not only everything that made John who he was – all the things Rodney hoped to one day learn about his husband, – but all that remained of the Ancients. So much knowledge, senselessly lost, all because he'd been unable to see just how far down the rabbit hole John was falling.

"Nobody knew," Radek tells him, sitting down beside him on the couch in his living room, as easily as if this were _Radek_'s city, _Radek's_ suite.

Someone's taken to being with him at all hours since their arrival on Nova Loegria. They don't call it babysitting; they call it wanting to compare figures or hear what he's learned or being unable to sleep in the oppressive silence of the nearly empty city. Rodney would thank them for it if he didn't hate that they thought it was necessary – which, admittedly, it probably is, but he doesn't want to have to admit that to himself, let alone anyone else.

But still, "You knew," he accuses, because that is easy and familiar and all his higher thought processes are busy dealing with the more important problem of what the hell he's going to do now that John is gone.

"Only because Evan heard you both arguing after you figured it out."

"Which you neglected to remind me of after John erased it from my memory."

"I thought it for best. You only would have confronted the Colonel again, which would have had all our memories wiped."

Rodney snorts, but it lacks any real heat and ends up sounding like a particularly nasal sigh. "Yes, and _that_ worked out so well for all of us."

"It might have, if Replicators had not retaliated."

"No, it wouldn't, because no matter how much John loves – loved," he corrects, throat catching on the word, he still can't say it, though it's been five days, "me, there are still a billion people out there who think he's a god, and that obviously has – had – some effect on him we couldn't anticipate. We know the Ori got their power from their worshipers. Who's not to say that it doesn't have some kind of narcotic effect, so that even if they didn't start out all that bad, they became addicted to it by the end and _couldn't_ stop on their own?"

"Power is always addiction."

"I'm talking about literally. Something with actual, measurable, opiate effects."

It's Radek's turn to sigh. "What do you want me to say, Rodney? Mistakes were made. I am sorry for that. I would have liked to save the Colonel, but you were my friend first. If it had to come down to your wellbeing over his, I chose you every time."

"Oh," he says faintly, because _oh_. He can barely conceive of a universe where John chose to be with him of all people. The idea that he might have friends, less omnipotent but more cognisant of his flaws, who feel similarly is just baffling, particularly from Radek, who really has seen him at his worst.

"Yes, yes," Radek says with extreme dismissiveness, paying more attention to his laptop than to Rodney, "people like you and want to do nice things for you. Stop being so surprised. Now, come, Evan wants us to upgrade all the security systems before he gets back with _Victoria_ and _Thetis_ – and _Apollo_, if they are still at rendezvous."

"We shouldn't let them back. It never would have gotten so bad if they hadn't kept on _pushing_ him." Maybe.

Maybe everything still would have gone wrong.

Maybe things never would have escalated if Rodney hadn't stuck those original devices into his brain in a vain effort to relive the physical pain absence from the city had caused him during the Second Exodus, which later caused him to near Ascension, which seems to have been some sort of tipping point for John.

Maybe if they'd never constructed the Intergalactic Gate Bridge, which had caused them to stumble upon John's cousin Helia and the _Tria_-

Maybe if Elizabeth had never died-

Maybe if the others-

Maybe-

"_Ano_, but in the end they were right and we cannot run city with out them, so what choice do we have?"

They have plenty of choices, Rodney thinks, but none of them would work in the long run. The Confederation is built upon the peoples of Pegasus rallying around their god, but with their god gone and the Wraith still very much around, there's no guarantee that they'll say rallied around his adopted son without the advanced weaponry Earth can provided. The very thought of working with the SGC again when they all but pushed John to the brink, constantly doubting and undermining him, makes him feel sick.

If-

No. Now is not the time for _if_. John is dead. What's done is done. No amount of _ifs_ or _maybes_ or _perhaps_ can bring him back.

Rodney reaches for his tablet. Work won't entirely distract him, but it is better than chasing his thoughts around in an endless loop, drowning in the question of where everything went wrong.

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

The first steps are hard. Iohannes must struggle to put one foot in front of the other, leaning heavily against the rough-hewn walls to stay upright. His fingers catch on cracked plaster, scraping the pads and leaving thin lines of blood in the most jagged places. The floor is little better than the wall, covered with debris of varying levels of sharpness – a problem where bare feet and balance issues are concerned.

Iohannes tugs the blanket tighter around him and trudges on.

He grows stronger as he walks.

Eventually he reaches the great sandstone amphitheatre where the very few of his kind remaining dwell beneath the light of distant galaxies. And it is there that Josua Lal Tribunus finds him.

* * *

"We were wondering when you would show your face," Josua informs him, trying for causal and getting caustic instead. It is difficult to remember that once upon a time they'd been close friends, by the Alteran definition of the word. In life, he'd been upstanding, but Ascension has turned him cruel, stripping him of his humanity and turning him into one of the unfeeling marble statutes locked in this ivory tower.

But that's what Ascension does, doesn't it? It twists people, turning them into perverted reflections of themselves. Iohannes would know.

God, Iohannes knows.

He slumps onto one of the carved, crumbling steps. "Josua, I have had the worst day you could possibly imagine. I, quite literally, died today and that's not even the worst of it." No, that had been the way Rodney had looked completely, utterly broken at the thought he'd become what the others claimed, as if it was a personal betrayal on such a deep, fundamental level that he'd never before even considered the potentiality of being possible.

"You must be brought to trial for your crimes."

"Really? You really want to do this again?"

Josua doesn't answer. He just places a hand on his shoulder. A moment later they are standing in the centre of the vast amphitheatre, considerably fewer people in attendance than the last time he went through this. Fifty-one, not counting himself, are all that remain of their kind. They barely fill a space designed for several million.

"I guess so," Iohannes says, climbing to his feet. He's steadier, but not as steady as he'd like and certainly not sturdy enough to hold his own against the others. "You guys do realize we've had double jeopardy laws on the books since before the Third Loegrian War, right? You've already tried and punished me for the crime I just now got around to committing. I could use some time to stew in my own juices about that before you start making me defend every action I've taken since the womb."

"Sins of your calliper are so great that the law knows no bounds in curtailing it."

"That doesn't sound legal."

Athanasia Aquilidea, who had spoken earlier, responds again now, her voice oddly flat and emotionless, as if in Ascension she'd managed to shed what few emotions she'd learned in her ridiculously short life. "The legality of your sentence is not in question, your most recent crime is."

"Aren't they one in the same?" he asks, glancing around for a chair. Naturally there's not one, and the desire not to make this any worse that it has to be is weighing strongly against his desire to sit down. "Look, I know I messed up. I messed up big time. But I'll find some way to make it right. I don't know how yet, but I'll find a way-"

"That is not the crime we are concerning ourselves with at the moment."

"No? What us it then? My fashion sense? I've been told it's a crime against nature, but I didn't think they were serious."

"Cease your theatrics. You are here to stand trial for the murder of Chaya Sar Schismatica, nothing more, nothing less."

"You've for to be kidding me."

"We are not."

Iohannes turns his gaze on the man siting at Athanasia's right. He Ascended eighty years before Iohannes was born, but he knows Nicomedes Lahir Peritus. He's known men like Nicomedes his whole life: worshipping the past and neglecting the future, clinging tightly to the dictums of their ancestors and ignoring the fact that the Descendants have progressed far beyond the primitive things they were before Atlantis left Avalon. In his sharpest tone, he tells the man, old and greying even in Ascension, "It was an accident."

"That is immaterial."

"Please. Any if you would have done the same if you knew how."

"That too is immaterial."

"No. No, it's not. You can't just, just treat people one way and behave another. You've got to treat everyone the same or everything falls apart. Doing otherwise is how beings like the Wraith and the Asurans and Chaya come into existence in the first place. Hell, _I_ wouldn't be here now if people had just treated me as I asked instead of praying to me."

"You chose your heresies." This comes from the man on Athanasia's left, Creon Syagrius Valens Praetor, who succeeds in being more irritating than Nicomedes only by virtue of having once been _praetor_ of Tirianus and should thusly, in Iohannes' opinion, have known better. He glares particularly hard at Valens and is pleased when he manages to stand steady enough to really make it intimidating.

Slowly but surely, his power is returning.

He's so weak now compared to what he was, but what he was had the force of one billion faithful behind him. Even now, weak as he is, he is still stronger than any one of the others. Before long, he'll be stronger than them all combined – if only he can keep them talking long enough. Which, really, shouldn't be hard.

"After you forced it on me. I didn't want to ascend. You made me. You cursed me. You gave me no choice. And maybe I took those choices, but I never would have done so if you hadn't taken away all the others. If I'm at fault, so are you."

"That is immaterial," Nicomedes repeats. He's beginning to think that it's the only thing the bastard knows how to say.

"It's as material a it gets."

"Do not," Athanasia says coldly, the most emotion he's ever seen from her slipping through in her clipped vowels, "blame your _Haeresis_ upon us."

"I wouldn't be in this position if you hadn't Ascended me."

"You made your choices."

"_You_ Ascended _me_," I didn't choose that – and, oh, he can feel his blood warm as the anger sets in, driving out the cold and making him feel stronger than he has since he woke up on this plane, dazed and confused and uncertain of everything.

"You interfered."

"And you didn't?"

"That is-"

"If you say _immaterial_ one more time, I will kill you."

"You," says Valens, rising to his feet as if his full height might somehow prove more intimidating to Iohannes, who has never known a moment of peace in his whole life and now never will because he is dead. He is dead and this is just an interlude before the end comes because it doesn't matter how much power is coursing through his veins, how strong and mighty he feels at this instant, any moment now he's going to lose control and then they'll see if he can repeat the crime he's on trial for our not. Either way, he'll not be making it back to the Lower Planes alive, "are a disgrace to the Alteran race."

"You watched the _Haeretici_ enslave the home galaxy. You allowed the goa'uld do the same to Avalon. You let the Wraith harvest our Descendants in Pegasus for five hundred generations and _me_ kill the last mortal members of our species without lifting a finger. Your approval is the _last_ thing I want."

Josua surprises him – and Athanasia's tribunal - by stepping to the fore, intervening for him the way he always did when they were so much younger and mortal still. "You were a good man once, Icarus. You have bettered the Pegasus galaxy and everyone in it. But you cannot deny what you have become. We have done our best to save you, to bring you back from your _Haeresis_, but you have denied us at every turn. Look at yourself now. You cannot deny you have become everything you swore you would never be. So, please, if there is any decency left in you, let us do what must be done."

"And _what must be done_?" he asks, his anger now like a fire within him. Gone are his frozen limbs. They have been replaced by fists that shake, barely kept by his sides, and the roar of blood rushing through his ears.

"You have already confessed your crime," Athanasia informs him. "For this we shall return you to your mortal state. From there, we shall take your component molecules and spread them across the galaxy so that you will never again be a threat to us or the Lower Planes."


	2. Pars Dua

_Sator_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

"Y'know," he says casually, fingers flexing at his sides for the gun he's not wearing, "that's the second death threat I've gotten today. This keeps up, I'm going to start taking these things personally."

Athanasia doesn't so much as blink – although, in truth, Iohannes isn't sure he's ever seen her blink. Most of the others don't bother. They've all forgotten – quite eagerly, it would seem – what it's like to be mortal. They keep up the pretence of humanoid bodies out of habit alone. Beyond that, their forms mean nothing to them, and if they so much remember the feel of sun or taste of water or the touch of the person they loved, they do not show it.

"You are a danger to every sentient being in the universe," she tells him, her voice neither as calm nor even as it had been ten minutes before. Her face, however, remains as if marble; the dark ringlets that frame it like whorls of onyx. If the Higher Planes had wind, it would not dare to touch her. If she had actual blood in her veins, a sentient being wouldn't either – not even to punch her, as Iohannes more and more finds himself wanting to do, at least until such time as he can acquire a gun and shoot her repeatedly, the gun being rather more to his liking. "Your path, while appearing to offer them salvation, can only lead to their untimely destruction."

"I don't see yours being much better."

"Our way allows for freedom of will."

"Your way gets people killed, you mean."

"Death is just one possibility. A meaningful life, full of observation, experimentation, and spiritual growth, is another."

"Fuck that," Iohannes says, leaning back on his heels. "Suffering is suffering. If you can stop it and don't, you're not worth the air you breathe."

"Icarus-"

"Yeah, how about you stow whatever high-handed, hypocritical bullshit you're going to try to feed me and _listen_ for once in your goddamn miserable excuses for lives? 'Cause you may be right: I may be a monster. But, let's be real here: you guys are just the other side of the same spectrum. And, once you get to our level, that slider starts to look a lot less like a line and more like a Möbius strip. So if I'm the devil in pretty white robes, so are you."

"Your lies-"

"Sounds to me like you're protesting just a little too much here, Athanasia."

"You-"

"Yes, _me_," Iohannes snaps, truly frustrated now.

He has, in no particular order: seen his plans to destroy the Asurans once and for all fail _spectacularly_, died, betrayed and been betrayed by the only family that has ever mattered to him, been placed on trial, died, declared himself a god, walked across half of creation, and, oh yes, _died_. Anger, which normally builds in him like a cold furry, seeping into his veins and spreading slowly throughout his limbs before finally taking shape in a terse word or a drawn weapon, burns within him. He is dead, he is dying, and no matter how powerful he's feeling now, he's not going to be strong enough to survive this.

This thought makes him even angrier. Hasn't he given enough? Hasn't he lost enough? Yes, he's made his share of mistakes – more than his share, really – but does he really have to pay for them with his life? Doesn't he get a chance to redeem himself? Doesn't he at least deserve a chance to go down on his knees and beg forgiveness from those he hurt so thoughtlessly?

Ten thousand years. It sounds so long, but even such a life is all too short. He'd spent so much of it waist-deep in blood and death and suffering, intimately familiar with the horrors of war. All Iohannes wants is a chance to do some good for once in his miserable, god-forsaken life. Good that doesn't end with his empire crumbling apart because he fell prey to pride he never knew he had or with the one good thing he ever had in his life looking at him and suddenly seeing a monster.

But that's not going to happen. Not now. So he might as well go out bloody and screaming, taking as many of his enemies with him as possible, true to himself to the very end.

"And _I_," he continues, feeding off the firestorm inside him, "am sick and tired of your _arrogance_ and your _excuses_ and your inability to comprehend how royally you've _screwed over_ this whole universe. The Wraith, the _Haeretici_, _me_ – if you follow the trail far enough, it all comes back to you. Somebody should make you pay for what you've done."

"Icarus-"

"My name is Iohannes," he corrects coolly. Then he stretches out his hands and the world is engulfed in flames.

* * *

**9 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

"Nice planet you've got here."

Rodney turns to Radek, who's hovering at his elbow like the mother hen he not so secretly is, and says, "I don't get paid enough to put up with this."

"_Nemusíte dostat zaplaceno vůbec_," he mutters, elbowing him sharply in the gut before stepping forward to greet their guests. "General O'Neill, Colonel Carter, Doctor Jackson, how wonderful to see you again. If you'll come with me, we are set up in Conference Room."

"Colonel Sheppard's come to his senses then?" O'Neill asks, not unkindly. Still, it makes Rodney wince. They've not told the SGC. They've not told most people a lot of things.

Radek, the bastard, doesn't even flinch. "Something like that."

But Rodney can't handle the charade. It's hard enough to trail along behind the group and try not to look like he's still picking up the pieces of his broken life. Having to listen to people talk to John like he's alive and well when he's never coming back is just too much. Dully, he says, "John's dead."

This brings the Terran delegation up short, even as Radek sends a, "_Do prdele,_" heavenward, to which 'Lantis flickers the lights sympathetically despite his not being a _pastor_ or even _custodia_. Traitor.

"What do you mean," Jackson questions slowly, as if they might just be misunderstanding the situation, "John's dead? He was Ascended. Ascended beings can't die."

"He gave his life to save us."

Rodney doesn't miss the eye roll this earns him. "Ascension," Radek explains, continuing up the Gate Room stairs, "is like highly-controlled, completely efficient nuclear detonation. All available mass is changed into electromagnetic energy, no different than what powers your cell phone or this city. It is obscene amount of energy, but still finite."

Sam spares a moment from the sympathetic look she's giving him to nod thoughtfully. Her husband is politic, glancing around the empty Gate Room in a way probably is far less casual than it looks as he says, "Yeah, I imagine a city this size gets, what? Six? Eight miles to the galleon?"

"The Ancients did not build for fuel economy, is true."

"So John is really dead." This is a statement more than a question and seems to shake Jackson as much as it continues to shake Rodney. "The Ancients are really gone now."

An irritated noise builds in his throat. "He wasn't-" Rodney finds himself saying. "He was more than just his species. John was better than them. He helped us and they punished him for it and-" It destroyed him.

"Rodney-"

"No, you don't get to _Rodney_ me. I'm tired of being _handled_ like I'm, I'm-" but he loses steam halfway through. "Fine. You know what? You just keep on doing what you're doing. Since you're not going to listen to me or any of extremely rational advice anyway, I'm just going to go back to the lab-"

Radek literally grabs the back of his collar and tugs him in the direction of the Conference Room. "No. You are coming to this meeting and you are staying."

"Out of curiosity," Sam asks, possibly to keep herself from laughing, "who are we meeting with?"

"Evan is _imperator_ now."

"Major Lorne?"

"Well," Daniel muses, "John did adopt him."

"Yeah, but I thought that was all for show."

Evan catches the tail end of this conversation as they take their seats around the conference table, Radek making sure to manoeuvre it so that he's seated between Evan and himself, as if that will somehow ensure his good behaviour. Or, more likely, ensure his compliance with whatever ridiculous terms they agree with to bring the Expedition back. "I've come to the realization that everything Icarus did was for show, until it wasn't."

"How Zen."

"Philosophy major," Evan shrugs.

"I'm sorry," O'Neill says earnestly, taking off his hat and setting it on the table. "So, what will it take to allow our people to come back?"

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

Time unravels as creation burns around him.

He sees the universe collapse in on itself. He watches stars unravel and species spring, full-grown, from cataclysms before shrinking back to the first tenacious cell. Atoms split apart. Protons dissolve. Leptons flood the shrinking space. The fundamental forces join together, one by one, until supersymmetry is restored and the only thing that can be said to exist in this inconceivably hot, dense, chaotic wasteland is him.

God he may or not be, the darkness is terrifying. The silence is maddening, _tick tick ticking_ slowly backwards, every second dragging out like a lifetime as the moments fly their way back to the moment beyond which there will be no more moments. But worst of all is the solitude. It's crippling in a way ten thousand years alone in Atlantis' own darkness and silence had somehow managed not to prepare him for.

For an interminable eternity, he rages his way into oblivion, striking out with everything he has, trying anything to be free of this torture. But nothing he does has any effect on the darkness. Creation only grows darker and he grows weaker.

He is so alone.

He is so alone, but he can see it all so clearly now – all the things that were, that weren't; that never could be. There's no creator, no purpose, no origin. The universe only exists because it could not stand its own silence. It filled itself with noise and light and laughter and love, love, love, and Iohannes lost everything that mattered because he forgot knowledge is not wisdom, strength is not power, and ability is not right. He set out to save the universe, and has ended up destroying it instead.

He's wasted all his chances, throwing them away one after another for fleeting ideas and momentary snatches of power. But what he wouldn't give for one last chance, one last attempt to make it right.

* * *

**9 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Evan leans forward in his chair, putting his elbows on the table. The sleeves of his robe – not one of John's, but in the same black-on-black style, only different in it's simplistic, almost perfunctory silver embroidery – fall back, revealing the cuts and scrapes he's received over the last few days in the repair efforts are taking place across the city. There are a lot of jagged edges and a lot of shattered glass. None of them, not even their new _imperator_, have been able to escape unscathed.

"The same as before: medicines for IHC and ammunition for our weapons."

"You're not exactly in a position to be making those kinds of demands, Major-"

"_Imperator_," Evan corrects, surprising the General. The Terrans always seem to forget that Evan's not the by the book solider they seem to think he is. He'd never played by the book – or, at least, not a book that the SGC would recognise. He's just better at pretending he is. "The Air Force stripped me of my rank when they dropped me from the rolls, remember? I was _heres_ while Icarus was alive, legally recognized as his chosen son and heir by the people of the two hundred and twenty-seven planets that make up the Confederation. Now I am _imperator_."

"Question still stands, though," Jackson says, taking up the thrust of the conversation. "This Confederation is only held together by virtue of the fact that the people of those two hundred and twenty-seven planets thought John was their living god. With him gone, all of that falls apart."

Radek shakes his head. "I will admit that may have been the case once, but in the eight months he was _imperator_, he managed to build foundations of an empire that could far outlive him. Atlantis has become interplanetary trading hub – an economic and cultural centre, in addition to governmental seat. While planets could easily leave the Confederation now that their impetus to join is gone, the fact remains that there is more incentive to stay than leave."

"And," Evan adds, leaning back in his chair now, "we still have spaceships, as well as an army that can actually go up against the Wraith."

It's Sam's turn to shake her head. "I thought you were the one looking to _prevent_ a war."

"All I'm looking to do is protect my people. I won't come after Earth – but you've got to promise me you won't try to take Atlantis. If you try, if you succeed, you'll doom this galaxy. We have a duty here. If we abandon them, the Wraith will kill them all before moving on to your galaxy and doing to you what they've done to us for the last ten thousand years."

"Earth is your home, Major," the General says, ignoring Evan's earlier injunction. "You were born there, remember?"

To his own surprise, Rodney finds himself interjecting, "But it's not home," before Evan can form a reply. "You're the one's that don't understand. You want to come here and, and _mine_ this city for science and technology and anything it takes to keep you at the top heap now that the Ori and the Asgard and goa'uld are gone. But Atlantis isn't just a _city_, something you can just strip for parts and abandon, she's our _home_. She's _sentient_ and _alive_ and her secrets are hers to share, not for you to steal. That's why John spent ten thousand years in the Control Chair. It's why he gave his life to bring her here."

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

Then something wonderful happens.

Iohannes could not say what, for even with the unconstrained knowledge of the Alteran race at his fingertips, his understanding of the more complex concepts still leaves much to be desired – another way he should have known he is not a god, he reminds himself, tucking the thought away until such a time as enough carbon exists for there to be coals to rake himself over. All he knows is, one second the universe is collapsing in on itself, undoing thirteen point seven nine eight billion years of history as the whole of creation hurtles headlong back to the start, the next the Big Bang is (for lack of a better word) _banging_.

Gravity breaks away from the other fundamental forces. It is quickly followed by the strong nuclear force, and suddenly things have mass and charge and flavour and colour. Matter, in all its forms, springs into being, and soon there are stars and quasars, galaxies and superclusters – and planets, so many planets.

He watches life arise on Loegria, the first life ever to come into existence anywhere in the universe, and watches it evolve and change through the ages until it gives rise to the Alteran race. They are bumbling fools at first, worse than even the Terrans, but they are young still and the most complex organism the universe has yet to see.

They are the universe experiencing itself for the very first time.

Under Iohannes' watchful eye, his ancestors evolve from hunter-gatherers, learn language, tell stories; invent gods in the wind and the water and the stars above. He looks on as Cambria and Cornubia (the two great nation-states that would come to so define – and destroy – that beautiful blue world) carve themselves out of land that until then borne no name, and he finds himself not quite so lonely anymore.

He is there with all the great thinkers, at their sides as they build upon the knowledge that will one day take them to the stars. He is beside all the great kings, standing with them as they build the empires that will all but destroy their race. He is invoked by every priest, the thousand names of their hundred gods meant for him alone, and is strengthened by the prayers of all the faithful, even as they rape and pillage and burn in his differing names.

He swears he has learned his lesson this time. He swears he won't intervene.

So he watches massacres and wars. So he watches young men be torn apart by dogs. So he watches children shut in the dark and the cold, crying out to their gods to protect them. So he watches the raping and pillaging and the burning done in his name – and it takes all he has, but Iohannes does nothing.

It's not his place, no matter how loudly they cry out for their _sweet, merciful god _to save them.

It's not.

It's not.

It's not.

* * *

**9 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

No one's particularly pleased when General O'Neill says he wants Colonel Telford to come back as the Head of the new Expedition – not just remain the military commander, but _the_ Head – but Radek kicks him under the table before Rodney can make too much of a protest. For one thing, there are other things that are worth their protesting – the medicine, for one, and the various bits and bobs they'll need to keep the Argosy running now that John's not around to pull raw minerals out of the ground with the force of his mind. For another, Radek kicks _hard_.

Still, they're distracted by the conversation, so none of them notice the figure that suddenly appears in the doorway until he says, "No," with a firmness that is entirely belayed by the way he staggers forward, clutching at the table for support before _slumping_ into the nearest chair like his legs have turned to jelly. "Anyone but Telford."

"John," Rodney breathes, sure that he's hallucinating.

"Hey Rodney," he says quietly, not quite daring to look at him. "Long time, no see."

This, of course, is the wrong thing to say, because it's been, "_Two weeks_. You've been gone _two weeks_ and _that's_ all you've got to say?" He doesn't hear the scraping of his chair as he jumps to his feet nor feels Radek's hand on his arm as he tries to hold him back. "I thought you were _dead_. Again, I might add, because it's a habit with you. I don't know why I continue to be surprised by it, but I am, and it takes _ten years_ off my life _each time_ and all you can say after all that is _long time, no see_?"

"Sorry," John says, sounding more genuinely sincere than he ever has in his life. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't have a lot of time and I wanted you to know that before I-"

"What the hell do you mean _you don't have a lot of time_? I just got you back. The others will have to wait-"

"The others are gone," he coughs, voice ragged and rough, like a truck full of sandpaper has driven through his throat. "This form's not stable. I spent most of my energy fixing everything. I don't have enough – didn't have enough – to come back. But I wanted to fix it. I couldn't just – I couldn't just watch."

"What do you mean _this form's not stable_?" Rodney demands at the same time Jackson asks-

"The others are_ gone_?"

- and Radek presses-

"Fix _what_?"

John coughs again. "I destroyed the Higher Planes. They," he makes a strange, scrunching motion with his hands. One of them – the one he had used to cover his mouth – is slick and red with blood, "collapsed in on themselves. Kick started the universe. But it wasn't right. I had," a longer coughing fit this time, and he can hear Radek on the comm with Carson, telling the idiot to get down here _yesterday _if they wanted to save John, "to fix some things... Things weren't happening like they were supposed to…"

"You're not making any sense, John." Sam says, because she knows just as well as Rodney does that, if what John is saying is true, he _essentially created the universe_, because the spontaneous "curling up" of the seven higher dimensions M-theory requires to work is one of the theories for how the Big Bang got started, which is beyond ridiculous, if not outright impossible, for any number of reasons.

"I did what I could. I made sure enough of my people got off Loegria to keep the Alteran race alive... I kept the _Haeretici_ from following the Caravan to Avalon… Made sure there was a fissure in the ice so that the rescue teams wouldn't have to dig to find you in Antarctica… Couldn't stop myself though, no matter how much I wanted to. Nothing I tried worked..."

Rodney kneels down in front of him, taking his blood-slick hands. He's still angry with John for taking his memories – there aren't words to describe how angry he is – but he still loves John. He still can't bear to watch him die _again_ on his watch. "John-" he begins, but John's not having any of it. He always has to have the last word.

This time it's a whispered, "Please understand," that barely precedes a flood of forgotten thoughts flowing haphazardly up his arm.

Instinctively Rodney breaks away, but it's too late: the thoughts are there, piecing themselves piece by undeniable piece until it's all there. Everything that John took from him – every discovery of his betrayal, every acknowledgement of the depth of his fall – is back along with faint, disjointed memories that were never his to begin with.

His head spins. It's more than he can take, even with the new, upgraded Devices in his brain. Images of burning planets and sobbing children and whispers on the wind fill his mind and dissipate as quickly as they came. And when he can finally open his eyes again-

"There's massive internal bleeding," Carson says. "We've got to get him into surgery fast or we're going to lose him." He spares only a second to ask, "How did this happen? I thought he was bloody Ascended?"


End file.
